Potential Utility of a Visual Inpatients’ Geographical Information System as a Consultation Tool in Advanced Treatment University Hospitals *
The university hospital in this study forms part of an education agency teaching medicine and affiliated services. Furthermore, it plays an important role providing community medical services. It only natural that institutional understandings of“ community” differ betweenuniversity hospitals providing advanced medical treatment and general community hospitals. In order for stakeholders to discuss the Actual Healthcare Area, a data visualization tool that takes into account patient behavior and health delivery systems and represents this information in an accessible way is required. We investigated the usefulness of Diagnosis Procedure Combination (DPC) data on the Geographic Information system (GIS) using visualization tools. Almost 90% of hospitalized patients in the university under study were from Okayama prefecture. However, the residential information mapping we conducted clearly showed that geographic distribution varies depending on age and diagnostic group. We consider this visualization tool to be useful, especially in situations that require consultation between stakeholders. (Accepted on July 31, 2013)
